when you wanted to do a sale on steam or activate a carousel slot in 2011 the way you did it was by emailing your steam rep and asking them to do it
where by "steam rep" I mean "some valve employee you knew personally"
if your valve employee left the company you'd have to go around looking for someone else to become your chaperone so you could manage your game again (or you'd get tossed unceremoniously in some busy person's pile) and if your rep was busy they just might not get back to you for ages so you had to plan a lot of this stuff out way in advance
this changed pretty quickly by the time greenlight was up but IMO it gives you a real idea of how things were operated back then
